‘These planes do have phones’: Legal expert says Trump could’ve obeyed law — had he wanted
If the Justice Department wanted to comply with a judge’s order, they would have, a legal reporter said Monday.
President Donald Trump shipped a number of migrants he claimed were gang members to El Salvador over the weekend, in apparent defiance of an explicit order from a judge to turn the planes around, CBS News reported.
New York Times legal correspondent Mattathias Schwartz spoke with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on Monday’s “Deadline: White House,” explaining, “These planes do have phones. They could have been recalled.”
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“I think if the government had a serious interest in complying” with the order from the chief judge of the Washington, D.C., District Court, James Boasberg, “they certainly could have,” said Schwartz.
“I also do see them saying in their court filings that they don’t believe judicial review actually applies to this at all,” he added.
“They’re claiming there is some nexus here to war or to terrorism,” Schwartz explained.
Schwartz also disagreed with former Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who commented that the Justice Department is trying to “thread the needle” and find a “normal” way to push back in court.
“They’re saying that when it comes to this set of things, we don’t believe that the courts actually have power to restrain the president. And that is a pretty aggressive, novel — maybe not unprecedented. But that’s a pretty bold claim, considering the United States isn’t actually at war,” said Schwartz.
“Some of the stuff that you’re seeing in some of these DOJ filings is pretty out there just from a historical perspective,” he added.
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